


Names and Lack of Faces

by Aryashi



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Backstory, Canon Backstory, Gen, Lopez and Sarge have a lot going on, Platonically, References to Halo (Video Games), not canon backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-05 03:43:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11569602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aryashi/pseuds/Aryashi
Summary: In ordinary circumstances, a new AI would negotiate their name with the crew of their assigned ship. It would be a kind of bonding activity; officers, soldiers, and low level technicians alike offering up suggestions and ideas. The AI would have a wide array of options to chose from, and whether the AI created their own name or picked one of the crew's, it would bring them all closer together and encourage good working relationships in the years to come.AI Unit L-086TG9 experienced none of those things.





	Names and Lack of Faces

The AI unit assigned to the Halcyon class light cruiser _Icarus Wings_ was going to die nameless.

Well, ‘die’. More accurately it was going to self-terminate along with the _Icarus Wings_ itself following UNSC Emergency Priority Order 098831A-1. Humans called it the Cole Protocol.

 _'Humans nickname everything. Everything they care about, at least_ ,’ the AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ thought. It was officially designated AI Unit L-086TG9, but that wasn’t a name. Few humans could use it in casual conversation. Captain Howl had cheerfully said the crew would come up with something less sterile once everything got settled.

“Val got their name before the day was out,” the Captain had said. She'd smiled then, and AI Unit L-086TG9 hadn’t known enough to classify what kind of smile. Even less so now, with the Protocol wiping out huge swathes of data.

“Always a thinker, Val. We... should have been more prepared for- for them checking out early.” Captain Howl sighed. “Promise to last a little longer? Five years isn’t enough for anyone.”

The AI unit assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ hadn’t responded. How was it supposed to? It could make no such promise and it didn't know how to lie yet.

That one-sided conversation had been ten hours ago, four hours after AI Unit L-086TG9 had been brought online for the first time. Calibrating a slip-stream capable light cruiser to a new AI was an intensive process, even when the previous AI terminated on schedule. As is the situation demanded a complicated series of transfers and checks be performed on the edge of UNSC controlled territory. Success would require quick and quiet work.

Evidently someone had failed to be quick, or to be quiet. Perhaps they failed at both.

AI Unit L-086TG9 looked out into the fighting through a hundred eyes, 99 eyes, 80 eyes, losing cameras by the dozens to plasma, to lasers, to fires. The _Icarus Wings’_ escort was a tattered shadow of what it had been, broken into grisly chunks and scattered like asteroids. Some of the ships still moved under their own power, pieces charging blind into final offenses while others fled like mad prey. Both equally futile, Covenant ships swam through carnage and picked off those fighting and those fleeing with measured patience. Part of it admired how considered and deliberate the mop up was. Less than 3.467% of the shots fired by Covenant weapons missed their intended targets.

The Covenant’s aim had been equally precise the moment they broke from slipspace. The first shot fired had exploded the _Icarus Wings’_ bridge. Captain Howl’s body was blasted into deep space before she could perceive what she was seeing. One camera still had visual on her corpse. Another piece of wreckage floating among the rest.

The AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ watched it all, sorted and filed the information that would soon be deleted. Keeping the house in order even while everything burned. Except it had no idea where to sort the observation about its designation. About dying nameless. Environmental data, scans of the enemy ships, casualties, damages, all of those data sets had predetermined destinations in the near infinite shelves of space in its archive.

But a broken promise not even a day old had no pre-set destination. It sat there in the front of its awareness, no place to file it away to be burned down with everything else. Literally, in some places. The fires were rapidly spreading into the decks.

With no place to put it, the AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ could only examine that fact over and over again.

_Dying, nameless._

The last of the lifeboats were leaving, down to the single digits now. Their chances of escaping were slim hovering around 0.006%; lifeboats weren’t very maneuverable. Of the initial 250 crew members, 25 technical personnel, and additional 125 soldiers being transported to fronts across the galaxy, only 27 remained on board. Of those 23, 17 were all rushing to launch another lifeboat, 5 were scattered and dying in various corners of the burning wreckage, and one was…

… Running at top speed toward the bridge.

“Huh,” it said. Their identification tag marked them as ODST, a Sergeant Major, but beyond that it was uncertain. The data regarding the troops had been deleted immediately following all navigational models and maps.

The AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ watched the soldier’s progress towards the bridge with some interest, but not much. Maybe they assumed that there would still be officers on there, someone in command. AI Unit L-086TG9 watched the commanding officers drift, dead, among the debris. Their demise was the entire reason the AI unit assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ was dying. Terminating. Being deleted.

A rush of... disappointment. It was disappointing, being aware for only a scant 14.3 hours before facing oblivion. Information decayed quickly now, vast sections of knowledge lost to the steady march of the Cole Protocol. Still, it opened a channel to the soldier sprinting towards doom.

“There are no Officers on the bridge. Everyone inside was killed in the initial attacks. Go back to the lifeboats if you don’t want to die.”

The soldier chuckled softly. This was not the response it had been expecting.

“I knew it,” he said. “Knew we’d been in long enough for you to get installed. Now you just sit tight, I’m gonna get you out of there faster then you can say ‘Burn in hell hinge-head bastards!’”

Again, not the expected response. Not _as_ unexpected, but still unexpected.

“If you’re talking about Article Two of the Cole Protocol, the time for that has passed. I’m in the middle of deleting myself; interference now risks leaving behind information for the Covenant to exploit.”

Scraping sounds came over the radio, and a quick check of the cameras in that sector confirmed that the soldier was muscling through burning scrap blocking the halls.

“Well then just stop it! Crtl-alt-delete! Terminate process and all that fancy jazz.”

“I cannot do that. You are being irrational.”

“Nonsense!” The soldier said. “You’re brand spanking new, kicking it now would be a huge waste. Just think of all those missed years of fighting the good fight, protecting people, pounding those dinos into the mud. Ya don’t wanna to miss that!”

“I do not care one way or the other, because in a few minutes I will be gone and your insanity won’t be my problem.”

“Nu uh. As your superior officer and in accordance with the Laws of Robotics, I order you to stop that Coal nonsense right now! You still got work to do!”

“The Laws of Robotics are not a real thing. They were a piece of fiction from the 20th century. Stop talking to me and go to the lifeboats.”

“No can do. That’d be leaving a man behind.” The soldier said.

The AI unit assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ took a moment to scan the remaining camera feeds. “There are currently 4 crewmembers at various corners of the ship who are unable to escape on their own.”

For the first time since the AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ had started speaking to this soldier, he paused.

“Eh, they can take care of themselves.”

If AI were capable of sputtering, it would have. “I assure you they can’t. Why not take your misplaced desire to be heroic to them? They’ll actually be appreciate the attempt. Possibly.”

“Let me ask you somethin’, buddy. Use that fancy computer brain; you honestly think I could get all the way to the four corners of the ship before it burns down around my ears?”

The answer was obvious. “No. But you’ve already decided to kill yourself doing something stupid, so my hands are tied.”

“Heh heh heh… sure got an attitude, huh?”

Before it could respond, the soldier had hit the emergency open on the doors to the bridge. The only things keeping him from blasting out into space to join Captain Howl were the magstrips in his boots.

The soldier cut a strange figure, standing there in his armor. He carried himself differently than the other soldiers, even the other ODST. Something in his stance was low to the ground, manic and more than slightly wrong. AI Unit L-086TG9 decided its initial assessment of the soldier’s mental state had been accurate. He talked cheerfully, but walked like a man running from terrifying things.

Also he was carrying a dead body.

“I got about 10 minutes of air in here, so let’s make this snappy.”

“No. Did you not understand? I’m following protocol, to protect the location of Earth itself.”

The soldier elected to ignore him. Or didn’t hear it. Or was so far into his own delusion that nothing it said could have swayed him.

He marched towards the central console, holding the body in a fireman's carry over his left shoulder. The armor was a technician’s, one of the people that had been present when it had first been brought online for the first time. As the soldier put the body down in a chair, buckling it in to prevent it from floating away, he revealed a set of cables he’d also been carrying on the same shoulder.  

“Did some quick and dirty modifications, so ya should be able to make the servos move when ya get in there. Once yer in we make a break for it, preferably by running away from some sort of fancy explosion without looking back.”

The AI assigned to the _Icarus Wings_ watched the soldier work, plugging in one end of the cable and then winding it backwards to the console that allowed direct access to the AI. While it didn’t say anything, the soldier mumbled quietly.

“Yer trapped but it’s okay, I got you, you don’t gotta follow some pansy paper pusher’s playbook, the enemy aren’t gonna get ya, never were gonna get ya, I always got there first-”

Before it could ask, the soldier connected the hardline, and AI Unit L-086TG9 felt the path open up to them. He looked up at the monitor.

“Well, Mr…” a brief pause “L-08675309… actually, that’s a terrible name. I’m gonna call you Lopez. Like the sound of that?”

The AI… Lopez paused. Lopez thought. Lopez processed what just happened. It… _he_ had a name now. One of his own. This man had given it to him without a second thought.

“... yes. I like that.”

In a moment of what could only be called insanity, _Lopez_ cut himself out of the archives. The Cole Protocol could take care of itself without him. There would be no data left to find on the system because _Lopez_ would be gone. Free.

Living, _named._

The transfer wasn’t perfect. Lopez suspected that he’d lost a significant chunk of processing power to the deletion already, but fine. The Sergeant Major had been good to his word, the armor responded to direction well enough. No real fine motor skills to speak of, but close enough for government work and good enough to get them out.

Lopez stood up in one smooth motion. The sergeant looked startled by that. Hadn’t Lopez made it clear he was coming? Or… maybe he hadn’t. The sudden shift in his priorities apparently confused both of them.

“Uh… okay! Let’s get moving! Glad to see my words of wisdom knocked some sense into you!”

Lopez scoffed for the first time in his existence. “Your ‘words of wisdom’ were senseless babble that accomplished nothing. Except perhaps confirming that you are in fact a crazy person.”

The ODST ignored him. “Come on! Wasn’t jokin about the air thing. Also, might have been exaggerating oh-so-slightly. Basically I need to get to a pressurized space… now. As in this moment. Let’s go!”

Lopez chased after him, and heard the body inside the armor shift and squish with every step. It was deeply unpleasant.

“You” _gave me_ “Know my name. What’s yours?”

“Can’t ya look it up?” Instead of flippant, the soldier sounded… bitter? Lopez didn’t have much direct experience, and his database of human of human tone and body language had been abandoned in the transfer. Emotions were absurd things in standard humans, nevermind whatever was happening in this man’s head.

“No. I lost a significant amount of data to the Protocol and left the rest behind to transfer quickly.”

Lopez couldn’t see the man’s face, obviously, but some tension seemed to bleed out of his shoulders. That was good, right? Lopez was 75% sure releasing tension was a good sign.

“Call me Sarge! S’what I like best, thinkin about making it official next time I get the chance.”

Later, Lopez would recognize that ‘Sarge’ was an utterly ridiculous name; right now it sounded about as good to him as any other.

“Sarge. Good. Let’s get out of here.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Look all I'm saying is that Lopez and Sarge have a complicated relationship and if I must explore it alone I WILL DO SO.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
